Wither-Sheets

You bleed pneumonic blood
on the stale wither-sheets
of old verses that your grandparents
would read you to sleep with.

The feather edges of the works,
stained in your stoic gripes,
now flounder amidst
the wrangled yards of your childhood,
failing and draining
like dying, yellow grass.

Your machine-smile
slowly devours the romance
while your eyes engineer through
long-since memorized fantasies
that were left to crumble
in the fetid hope of
‘grown-up,’ ‘professional,’ and ‘mature.’